To Preserve The Brand, Hostess Leaves Equity Owners Without A Twinkie To Show For Their Investment

Back in January, Hostess Brands Inc., makers of the Twinkie and lots of other snacks (but mostly the Twinkie) declared bankruptcy. Yesterday the company finally filed its plan to get out of bankruptcy, which basically amounts to telling its equity owners, “Thanks for all the money, now go away.”

The plan, which still requires court approval, would hand 75% of the company over to a group of current lenders, with the company’s unions getting the remaining 25%.

For everyone else it will require “sacrifices at virtually all stakeholder levels.”

As for the largest equity owners in the company, who according to papers filed with the court made more than $150 million in equity and debt investments into the debtors since 2009, including $40 million invested in 2011, well, they “will suffer a complete loss and receive nothing on account of these investments.”

In total, the plan would erase somewhere between $2-2.5 billion owed to unsecured creditors. This would still leave the company with $861.5 million in secured debt.

Hostess has already received court approval to place labor concessions on the Teamsters union and, more recently, the very inclusive Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers & Grain Millers International Union.

All this, says the company, is being done to preserve “one of America’s oldest and most iconic baking companies.”

This is the second time in less than a decade that Hostess has dealt with Chapter 11 bankruptcy, having most recently clawed its way out of the cellar in 2009.

Of course, if Hostess were to vanish, there are plenty of DIY Twinkie recipes, like this one, to help addicts wean themselves off their sugary drug of choice.